


beneath these fading stars lies home

by izadreamer



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant, in that FF characters come from their original games, not Radiant Garden, pre-KH 1, traverse town backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izadreamer/pseuds/izadreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles and short stories detailing Yuffie's time in Traverse Town, from the beginning to Sora's arrival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath these fading stars lies home

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned before, this story ignores the whole Radiant Garden backstory, and instead assumes that all FF characters come from their respective games. That said, I haven't played all these games personally--this story is mostly just here for character interaction, so please excuse any mistakes I may have made.
> 
> Last bit--Yuffie will be a bit OOC in the beginning, mostly due to the fact she's just lost her world. This will change, if you're worried about it.

Yuffie is learning. Slowly but surely, from the whispers hissed when they think she isn’t listening, from pitying veterans and spiteful fighters looking for someone new to hurt. She’s always been quick on the uptake, and it doesn’t take her long to figure it all out. She holds on to these new names that sit awkward and foreign on her tongue, these unfamiliar faces tainted with sorrow and bitterness, and to the knowledge of what really happened all those months ago, when the shadows had come. _Heartless,_ they are called _, those without hearts._ Those that steal hearts, take all their light away and don’t even have the grace to do it kindly.

The other refugees never say it, never out loud where she, the youngest, can hear—but Yuffie knows all the same. Those whose hearts are devoured by the Heartless become Heartless themselves, and the people she mourns might end up being the death of her.

It makes her feel sick. Because it can’t be true, it can’t. All those people, everyone— _VincentTifaBarrettMarleneReeveRenoNanaki_ —they couldn’t possibly be Heartless. It wouldn’t be fair.

But then, nothing has ever been fair. Yuffie knows that better than anyone.

Sometimes, in her darker moods, she wonders what’s worse: to become a Heartless, or to watch the ones you love become them and survive long enough to grieve.

She’s starting to think survival. At least if she were a Heartless, she wouldn’t have such dark thoughts. She wouldn’t have to think at all.

Traverse Town doesn’t help her, only drives the darkness and loneliness deeper in her scarred heart. It’s a place of In-Between, a glorified refugee camp, overrun by Heartless and traumatized, untrusting people.

Yuffie would know. She’s one of those people, after all. Perhaps it’s wrong of her, to spit in the face of her friend’s sacrifice like this, but Yuffie is too bitter to care. Yes, maybe she could laugh, smile, and tease. Playing her tricks just like she’s always done before wouldn’t be too hard, not for whom she used to be. But Yuffie is no longer the child she once was, even if her form is that of one.

It’s so hard to smile, to laugh, to trust, when her dreams are of the people she’s lost to the darkness, when she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night for people she will never see again. When the one person she might choose to trust, to befriend, could very well die the next day simply because they wandered down the wrong street.

Yuffie’s lost her world, her friends, and her smile. She’s not sure if she can survive losing anything else.

The other refugees call her a ghost-child, a breathing corpse. They whisper to the new inhabitants that her heart died with her world. Maybe they’re right.

So she walks, avoiding the rest unless she has no choice, wandering without a purpose or a goal. Every street, every corner, every nook and cranny is hers to explore. People try and create a home amongst the despair, but Yuffie doesn’t join them. She’s too tired, too bitter, for that. To make this place her new home would be to abandon the old one, and she can’t. She refuses.

It feels like she’s been walking forever. Traverse Town is a world endlessly without the sun, where the inhabitants can watch the Heartless slither through the streets and devourer the hearts of their fellow refugees. Always watching, for no matter whom they used to be, now they are useless and broken, cast away into a broken and cluttered world.

It is a fact she is well aware of, a truth she runs from. Today is no different, and Yuffie darts down the shadowed alleys, keeping to the flickering light of the lampposts. It’s a new street, a new district. She hasn’t been here before now. Tall buildings built with dark stone loom above her; the sky as dusky as it’s always been. The stars are becoming fewer and fewer with each passing day.

Despite the weak light, Yuffie’s eyesight is still at its peak—and in the shadows she sees something shift.

Her heart tightens in pain and grief, and she all but freezes in place, fear gripping her tight. A Heartless, here? After all these months, is this how she will go? She can run, perhaps, but she knows enough about the Heartless to know they never travel alone. She will be overrun before she can even call for help.

Another movement, this time casting the figure in the last rays of light from a dying lamp, and her fear fades. Not a Heartless, a person, sitting against the wall, their head of dark hair buried in their hands.

Yuffie walks up to them, to this stranger, staring down at their hunched form. Their shoulders are relaxed. They don’t even know she’s there, or if they do, they don’t care enough to acknowledge her.

It rankles her, their indifference, bringing the ghost of who she used to be closer to the surface than ever before. The urge to speak, to make them notice her, overcomes her usual sullenness. Something angry, something fiery, something like how she used to be fore the heartless came and stole it all away—

And all she can say is, “My world’s gone, isn’t it?”

Her voice cracks, the words rough and scratchy from disuse. It’s the first time she’s spoken in four months, let alone interacted with another. It’s a bit pathetic, really. Those bitter words are not out of place, not here… but Yuffie had almost believed better of herself.

The other sighs, and lifts his head from his hands. His dark brown hair hangs limply around his face, and his eyes are blue and blank, rimmed with red from past tears. There’s a long, diagonal scar between his eyes. Yuffie knows enough about Traverse Town to know there’s one on his heart too, just like the rest of them.

“Yeah,” he murmurs softly. “So is mine.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuffie says, and wonders why. But then, it’s not like she’s apologizing to him. She apologizing to Cloud, to Vincent, to Tifa, to her father, to—

Everyone.

“So am I,” the man sighs, and she’s knows it’s the same as hers—not to her, not really, but to those they have failed, to those who fell with their world when the Heartless came with their consuming darkness and greedy hands.

“I’m Yuffie,” she tells him, and struggles to force a smile on her face, a mere shadow of what it used to be. It feels appropriate.

“Squall,” the man responds in turn. Yuffie gets the feeling he sees right through her. She straightens and looks at the stars instead of acknowledging his glance, the far-off lights fading even as they speak.

Traverse Town is a world full of empty souls, and Yuffie is more alone than she’s ever been in her life. She feels so tired. Lost is not an emotion she ever thought she’d become so familiar with. She almost hates it.

“Hey Squall,” she whispers bitterly, and she can’t summon the energy to smile, to be cheerful. It doesn’t matter, but she thinks it should. “Whatta you say we stick together for a little bit?”

Squall tilts his head back to look at the stars with her, and even though Yuffie knows they may end up being complete opposites in terms of personality, in this they’ll always have something in common. Grief and loneliness is a good way to make friends, in her experience.

“Why not,” Squall sighs.

Yuffie attempts another smile. Maybe it’s real. Maybe it’s not. She’s long since forgotten how to tell.


End file.
